Oasis and some other things

Sep. 2nd, 2025 09:39 pm
snickfic: Valkyrie looking up, well-lit (Val)
[personal profile] snickfic
- Seen on Bluesky, someone is seeking your old LJ icons for their icon zine.

- My top five songs for August according to Tidal were four live tracks from the Oasis tour and their one "unplugged" release from the upcoming anniversary edition of (What's the Story) Morning Glory? They're all from a playlist I made called "new Oasis," which is an amazing playlist to have in 2025!!

- At some point I want to make a post of some more shippy highlights from the Oasis tour, but I keep not doing it and they keep adding new ones. They just... like each other so much? That is not something I would say about them in any other era, even back when they were at their weirdest about each other. These days they are just uncomplicatedly happy to see each other. It's wild.

- Speaking of the tour, on Friday I fly down to LA to see my second and final show, at the ROSE BOWL. Check that one off the bucket list, I guess!! The logistics of that trip have changed a bunch of times in the past three weeks, but I think I might finally have all the pieces nailed down, as of tonight (then again I thought that yesterday, too...). This trip feels really self-indulgent, like come on, I saw them at Wembley Stadium, surely that's enough for any one person. I am very excited to get to see them from the general admission area this time, though, and excited about the buddy I'm going with.

- I decided to focus on this Oasis WIP instead of signing up for Jump Scare, which was a great decision, because I just crossed the 10k mark on the Oasis WIP, and I've been working on it less than three weeks. Alas, I'm now convinced this 10k I have written is just lots of pieces that don't fit together or add up to anything! I'm going to focus on one scene that I know the shape and let the others rest for a bit, and hopefully I'll find the thread again.

- There are a lot of reasons I really want to finish the WIP, but one is that there is just nothing in the tag right now that I want to read. ;__;

- In November I'll have been more or less active in Oasis fandom for six years, which makes it my longest running active fandom. Hockey is the next closest, and I was in it a little less than five years. I wrote my first MCU fic in 2014, but I wouldn't consider myself active in the fandom until 2018, and then I left in 2021. It feels crazy a) that I've been into Oasis that long and b) that it of all things is my longest fandom, but on the other hand it's been an incredibly newsworthy six years for the fandom.

- I had a nice time with Seasons of Drabbles after defaulting last time. (Yes, on a 100-word exchange. It was a very busy spring.) I mostly requested only actual drabbles this time, rather than the double or triple drabbles or series thereof, and that was really nice. I mainly read actual drabbles, too, and that was also really nice. Somehow 200 words is just a lot harder to read than 100 words!

- On the last day of Fic in a Box signups, I swapped out my Re-Animator request for, wait for it, Heimdall/Loki/Valkyrie. I haven't requested a Thor ship in a full-length exchange in five years, but I wasn't feeling Re-Animator, and the last I checked there were still zero of this ship on AO3. I'm much happier with my slate of requests now.

Seasons of Drabbles!

Sep. 2nd, 2025 02:02 pm
snickfic: (Oasis walkon)
[personal profile] snickfic
I both wrote and received Oasis drabbles, and I'm really tickled how neatly they slot together as the before and after of Noel Gallagher:
kidhood by Anonymous, Liam/Noel in the 90s
irreconcilable differences by me, Liam/Noel now

I also got some other goodies, all 100 words. <3
glovework by [archiveofourown.org profile] TheFlirtMeister, Saw, Lawrence character study
Mouthwash by [archiveofourown.org profile] embraidery, Stardew Valley, Willy/Marlon
Sunset by [archiveofourown.org profile] embraidery, Stardew Valley, Willy/Marlon
Morning Musing, Stardew Valley, Sandy

And I bring some recs! All 100 words unless noted.
Brick and Bone by [archiveofourown.org profile] Kantayra, The Haunting of Hill House, Nell post-canon
Cheek to Cheek by [archiveofourown.org profile] septemberbells, ST:TOS, Chapel/Uhura, very sweet
The Seal's Child by [archiveofourown.org profile] Daeger, OW, 200 words, daughter of a selkie, dark/horror
undeath by [archiveofourown.org profile] Pornabus_Sockerton, 300 words, The Terror, Hodgson canon divergence, brrrrr
the ever-fleeting warmth by [archiveofourown.org profile] Ekevka, 200 words, The Terror, Collins character study, also brrrr
ozma914: Haunted Noble County Indiana (Default)
[personal profile] ozma914

 Pardon any typos, I'm still doing the speech to text thing.

We investigated the costs of producing and shipping our print books, and got some bad news: We're actually losing a little money on a couple of the books, and making hardly any on others. I'm all for a fun hobby, but this is also supposed to be a business, and when it comes to style--red is a bad look on a business.

So we have to increase the price of a couple of the books, by a dollar. This, of course, doesn't apply to the traditionally published books, Haunted Noble County, Indiana and Images of America: Albion and Noble County. In those cases the publisher sets the retail price.

On the matter of shipping costs, we took some books to the Post Office and did some figuring. Basically, sending our books to anywhere in America is $4.77 to ship, not including envelopes, which are around 50 cents or so. There's also handling, but we don't get enough mail orders to charge for our time.

It means to mail one book to you is $5.00, which for Haunted Noble County is now set up on our website:

https://markrhunter.com/haunted-noble-count 


Hitting the buy button will take you to a PayPal area for payment, and it will give us the address to ship it to. According to the Post Office, ordering two books would increase shipping to $5.22.

 

 

 

 

 You might be money ahead to buy the book direct from Arcadia Publishing, where shipping and handling is a dollar less:

https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/collections/vendors?q=Mark%20R.%20Hunter&contributorID=14550

 

Last time I checked Amazon S&H was actually more, but a lot less if you have Prime, or a larger order to go with it: 

https://www.amazon.com/stores/Mark-R-Hunter/author/B0058CL6OO?ccs_id=89718b2f-0cc8-425b-8418-0cb29ec6e039

 

It's also online at Barnes and Noble and--wait for it--copies are available at the Barnes and Noble store at Fort Wayne's Glenbrook mall:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/%22Mark%20R.%20Hunter%22

 Has anyone seen Haunted Noble County, Indiana for sale at any other brick and mortar locations?

 

So you can get a signed copy direct from us through the website, or from Butterfly Alley Gifts here in Albion:

www.facebook.com/p/Butterfly-Alley-Gifts-61551021355135/

 You can also get signed copies at one of our upcoming author appearances, which I'll give you information about on my next post. If you show up somewhere with a book you already bought, of course we'll sign it ... but don't count on that increasing the book's value.

 

I have to stop for now ... my talking muscles are getting tired.

Oh, just one more thing: When I say "we" set up this or set up that, it's actually Emily who did it. Even if I could type right now, my lack of talent on computer design verges on legendary.

 


 

 

As usual, all our books can be found here:

·        Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO

·        Barnes & Noble:  https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"

·        Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4898846.Mark_R_Hunter

·        Blog: https://markrhunter.blogspot.com/

·        Website: http://www.markrhunter.com/

·        Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ozma914/

·        Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkRHunter914

·        Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markrhunter/

·        Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarkRHunter

·        Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MarkRHunter

·        Substack:  https://substack.com/@markrhunter

·        Tumblr:  https://www.tumblr.com/ozma914

·        Smashwords:  https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/ozma914

·        Audible:  https://www.audible.com/search?searchAuthor=Mark+R.+Hunter&ref_pageloadid=4C1TS2KZGoOjloaJ&pf

 

Remember: Support both your local author and your local mail carrier.



Code deploy happening shortly

Aug. 31st, 2025 07:37 pm
mark: A photo of Mark kneeling on top of the Taal Volcano in the Philippines. It was a long hike. (Default)
[staff profile] mark posting in [site community profile] dw_maintenance

Per the [site community profile] dw_news post regarding the MS/TN blocks, we are doing a small code push shortly in order to get the code live. As per usual, please let us know if you see anything wonky.

There is some code cleanup we've been doing that is going out with this push but I don't think there is any new/reworked functionality, so it should be pretty invisible if all goes well.

denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)
[staff profile] denise posting in [site community profile] dw_news

A reminder to everyone that starting tomorrow, we are being forced to block access to any IP address that geolocates to the state of Mississippi for legal reasons while we and Netchoice continue fighting the law in court. People whose IP addresses geolocate to Mississippi will only be able to access a page that explains the issue and lets them know that we'll be back to offer them service as soon as the legal risk to us is less existential.

The block page will include the apology but I'll repeat it here: we don't do geolocation ourselves, so we're limited to the geolocation ability of our network provider. Our anti-spam geolocation blocks have shown us that their geolocation database has a number of mistakes in it. If one of your friends who doesn't live in Mississippi gets the block message, there is nothing we can do on our end to adjust the block, because we don't control it. The only way to fix a mistaken block is to change your IP address to one that doesn't register as being in Mississippi, either by disconnecting your internet connection and reconnecting it (if you don't have a static IP address) or using a VPN.

In related news, the judge in our challenge to Tennessee's social media age verification, parental consent, and parental surveillance law (which we are also part of the fight against!) ruled last month that we had not met the threshold for a temporary injunction preventing the state from enforcing the law while the court case proceeds.

The Tennesee law is less onerous than the Mississippi law and the fines for violating it are slightly less ruinous (slightly), but it's still a risk to us. While the fight goes on, we've decided to prevent any new account signups from anyone under 18 in Tennessee to protect ourselves against risk. We do not need to block access from the whole state: this only applies to new account creation.

Because we don't do any geolocation on our users and our network provider's geolocation services only apply to blocking access to the site entirely, the way we're implementing this is a new mandatory question on the account creation form asking if you live in Tennessee. If you do, you'll be unable to register an account if you're under 18, not just the under 13 restriction mandated by COPPA. Like the restrictions on the state of Mississippi, we absolutely hate having to do this, we're sorry, and we hope we'll be able to undo it as soon as possible.

Finally, I'd like to thank every one of you who's commented with a message of support for this fight or who's bought paid time to help keep us running. The fact we're entirely user-supported and you all genuinely understand why this fight is so important for everyone is a huge part of why we can continue to do this work. I've also sent a lot of your comments to the lawyers who are fighting the actual battles in court, and they find your wholehearted support just as encouraging and motivating as I do. Thank you all once again for being the best users any social media site could ever hope for. You make me proud and even more determined to yell at state attorneys general on your behalf.

Exchanges and things

Aug. 27th, 2025 11:25 am
snickfic: Oasis: Liam Gallagher black and white (Oasis Liam)
[personal profile] snickfic
- "I am definitely not signing up for [community profile] ficinabox," I said, and then promptly wrote most of a letter. I now have a request I can match to and spent the morning making a list of other requests that I could swap for. I've submitted a swap request, maximum two swaps of 2k each, but there's time to change my mind before swaps close.

- The Kinktober prompts are out. I have managed to write like one kinktober fic ever, plus October is the WORST month for this when I'm also working on FIAB and Yuletide treats and watching all the horror movies, and yet. You know what ship I want all the kinks for, all the time? It's Gallaghercest. I've made a list of all the kinks from this year that I think would be the most fun for them, and I think maybe I will try to post... one a week? That seems like something I could do.

- Speaking of the Gallaghers, I have almost 7k of reunion... vignettes? At this point there are enough of them that maybe it's just a story, lol. I keep pecking away, and words keep happening.
denise: Image: Me, facing away from camera, on top of the Castel Sant'Angelo in Rome (Default)
[staff profile] denise posting in [site community profile] dw_news

I'll start with the tl;dr summary to make sure everyone sees it and then explain further: As of September 1, we will temporarily be forced to block access to Dreamwidth from all IP addresses that geolocate to Mississippi for legal reasons. This block will need to continue until we either win the legal case entirely, or the district court issues another injunction preventing Mississippi from enforcing their social media age verification and parental consent law against us.

Mississippi residents, we are so, so sorry. We really don't want to do this, but the legal fight we and Netchoice have been fighting for you had a temporary setback last week. We genuinely and honestly believe that we're going to win it in the end, but the Fifth Circuit appellate court said that the district judge was wrong to issue the preliminary injunction back in June that would have maintained the status quo and prevented the state from enforcing the law requiring any social media website (which is very broadly defined, and which we definitely qualify as) to deanonymize and age-verify all users and obtain parental permission from the parent of anyone under 18 who wants to open an account.

Netchoice took that appellate ruling up to the Supreme Court, who declined to overrule the Fifth Circuit with no explanation -- except for Justice Kavanaugh agreeing that we are likely to win the fight in the end, but saying that it's no big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime.

Needless to say, it's a big deal to let the state enforce the law in the meantime. The Mississippi law is a breathtaking state overreach: it forces us to verify the identity and age of every person who accesses Dreamwidth from the state of Mississippi and determine who's under the age of 18 by collecting identity documents, to save that highly personal and sensitive information, and then to obtain a permission slip from those users' parents to allow them to finish creating an account. It also forces us to change our moderation policies and stop anyone under 18 from accessing a wide variety of legal and beneficial speech because the state of Mississippi doesn't like it -- which, given the way Dreamwidth works, would mean blocking people from talking about those things at all. (And if you think you know exactly what kind of content the state of Mississippi doesn't like, you're absolutely right.)

Needless to say, we don't want to do that, either. Even if we wanted to, though, we can't: the resources it would take for us to build the systems that would let us do it are well beyond our capacity. You can read the sworn declaration I provided to the court for some examples of how unworkable these requirements are in practice. (That isn't even everything! The lawyers gave me a page limit!)

Unfortunately, the penalties for failing to comply with the Mississippi law are incredibly steep: fines of $10,000 per user from Mississippi who we don't have identity documents verifying age for, per incident -- which means every time someone from Mississippi loaded Dreamwidth, we'd potentially owe Mississippi $10,000. Even a single $10,000 fine would be rough for us, but the per-user, per-incident nature of the actual fine structure is an existential threat. And because we're part of the organization suing Mississippi over it, and were explicitly named in the now-overturned preliminary injunction, we think the risk of the state deciding to engage in retaliatory prosecution while the full legal challenge continues to work its way through the courts is a lot higher than we're comfortable with. Mississippi has been itching to issue those fines for a while, and while normally we wouldn't worry much because we're a small and obscure site, the fact that we've been yelling at them in court about the law being unconstitutional means the chance of them lumping us in with the big social media giants and trying to fine us is just too high for us to want to risk it. (The excellent lawyers we've been working with are Netchoice's lawyers, not ours!)

All of this means we've made the extremely painful decision that our only possible option for the time being is to block Mississippi IP addresses from accessing Dreamwidth, until we win the case. (And I repeat: I am absolutely incredibly confident we'll win the case. And apparently Justice Kavanaugh agrees!) I repeat: I am so, so sorry. This is the last thing we wanted to do, and I've been fighting my ass off for the last three years to prevent it. But, as everyone who follows the legal system knows, the Fifth Circuit is gonna do what it's gonna do, whether or not what they want to do has any relationship to the actual law.

We don't collect geolocation information ourselves, and we have no idea which of our users are residents of Mississippi. (We also don't want to know that, unless you choose to tell us.) Because of that, and because access to highly accurate geolocation databases is extremely expensive, our only option is to use our network provider's geolocation-based blocking to prevent connections from IP addresses they identify as being from Mississippi from even reaching Dreamwidth in the first place. I have no idea how accurate their geolocation is, and it's possible that some people not in Mississippi might also be affected by this block. (The inaccuracy of geolocation is only, like, the 27th most important reason on the list of "why this law is practically impossible for any site to comply with, much less a tiny site like us".)

If your IP address is identified as coming from Mississippi, beginning on September 1, you'll see a shorter, simpler version of this message and be unable to proceed to the site itself. If you would otherwise be affected, but you have a VPN or proxy service that masks your IP address and changes where your connection appears to come from, you won't get the block message, and you can keep using Dreamwidth the way you usually would.

On a completely unrelated note while I have you all here, have I mentioned lately that I really like ProtonVPN's service, privacy practices, and pricing? They also have a free tier available that, although limited to one device, has no ads or data caps and doesn't log your activity, unlike most of the free VPN services out there. VPNs are an excellent privacy and security tool that every user of the internet should be familiar with! We aren't affiliated with Proton and we don't get any kickbacks if you sign up with them, but I'm a satisfied customer and I wanted to take this chance to let you know that.

Again, we're so incredibly sorry to have to make this announcement, and I personally promise you that I will continue to fight this law, and all of the others like it that various states are passing, with every inch of the New Jersey-bred stubborn fightiness you've come to know and love over the last 16 years. The instant we think it's less legally risky for us to allow connections from Mississippi IP addresses, we'll undo the block and let you know.

snickfic: art of Mary Poppins flying with her umbrella (mary poppins)
[personal profile] snickfic
Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). A group of hapless twenty-somethings wander into a farmhouse in rural Texas hoping to buy gas for their van and are picked off one by one by the home's very large nonverbal resident, who wears the skin of a human face for a mask.

I got to see this in the theater, which IMO is definitely the way to go for this one. It does a great job building tension from the very beginning. For all its raw filmmaking approach, I felt the movie had a surprising amount of ambition in terms of both background themes (city vs country, the way technological progress can disrupt people's lives) and this recurring idea of, like, a sense of cosmic apocalypse brought on by the alignment of the stars and planets. The sun as a malign figure wreaking havoc on humanity. The movie goes way harder than it needs to do to succeed as an exploitation horror film.

I was surprised by how little of the actual story I'd osmosed from hearing about the movie over the years. For example, I had no idea that of the little friend group of victims, the one with by far the most lines and personality is a guy in a wheelchair, which honestly felt pretty progressive. His mobility is a significant element of his character throughout the film without being a plot point, and I appreciated that. The movie also leans more into black comedy than I expected. Leatherface lumbering around chasing people with the chainsaw is some pretty good physical comedy, actually!

I also had not realized just how sympathetic a character Leatherface is. He's clearly upset about these people just walking through his front door and wandering around his house. After the second or third one, he sits in his living room, surrounded by taxidermy and bone furniture, and puts his head in his hands, like why is this happening to me!! He also doesn't seem to have any malice towards his victims. There's a whole backstory of how his family used to kill cows at the slaughterhouse, and he treats the tresspassers like cows. But once he and his family has captured the final girl alive and tied her up at the dinner table, he dresses up for dinner! I feel like these details sound like I'm being sarcastic or making fun, but genuinely I liked him a lot and felt sorry for him, especially in the context of how his family members treat him.

Overall a good time. Would watch again.

--

Honey Don't (2025). In the second in Ethan Coen's "lesbian B-movie trilogy," Margaret Qualley stars as Honey, a neo noir private eye investigating a death that may or may not be connected to a creepy local church pastored by head creep Chris Evans.

I had a great time with this movie until I didn't. It's 2/3 of a very fun movie in which Margaret Qualley is a really hot PI, and then 1/3 of a very annoying movie in which she is those things, so at least you get really hot Margaret Qualley the whole time. The plot barely counts as one; this movie is running entirely on vibes. For most of the movie it's unclear whether a crime has even occurred. Fortunately the vibes are excellent. Yes, I DO want to watch Qualley show off her long legs in dressy casual slacks and heels while kicking ass, taking names, and having lesbian one-night stands. She did the job she needed to do in The Substance, but she is absolutely magnetic in this. On the other hand, the ending is nonsense AND made me mad, the worst combo.

I can't believe I'm saying this, but Chris Evans the cult leader was a disappointment. Between this and Bad Times at the El Royale, I'm 0/2 on Avengers-turned-cult-leaders. (Has Ruffalo been one? He seems the likeliest. Does his role in Mickey 17 count?) The pastor's plotline also turns out to be completely irrelevant, and the whole thing where his church is a front for a drug running business funded by "the French" is just signature Coen quirkiness, I guess.

OTOH, I think Charlie Day has finally aged into roles I can enjoy him in. So there's that.

Honestly this movie needed another writing pass or two and probably should have excised the church plot entirely and come up with a new, better mystery for Honey to investigate. But if vibes and Qualley are enough of a draw, this might be worth your time.

--

Biosphere (2022). Sterling K Brown and Mark Duplass are childhood friends who live in a tiny dome they can't leave after the rest of Earth and humanity has been destroyed.

This is the purest two-man show I have seen in movie form in a very long time. It has exactly one set (broken up into various pieces, but still) and exactly two actors, who are clearly what all the tiny budget went toward. It is a science fiction comedy/drama thing about, idk, hope and resiliance and male friendship.

A movie like this lives or dies by the chemistry between its leads, and Brown and Duplass are great together. There are many funny bits, enough honest emotion to keep me hooked, and various plot developments that I enjoyed. (Gotta love when you quote a famous movie line and then five minutes later the character ALSO quotes that line.) I also just respect the hell out of this kind of barebones, microbudget moviemaking. You see it a fair bit in horror (such as Duplass's project Creep), but less in other genres.

The Hand, the Books, and the Typing

Aug. 23rd, 2025 04:23 pm
ozma914: Haunted Noble County Indiana (Default)
[personal profile] ozma914

The surgery went well, or so I assume. The bandage doesn't come off until next Wednesday, so in theory there should could be some kind of horror movie eye inserted into the palm of my hand that I won't know about until then. My wrist is itching like crazy, so maybe that's eyelashes blinking.

 

 
Is it the all Seeing hand?

 The meds they had me on can cause thinking like that. I tried to go off the painkiller early, because I'm not a big fan of the heavy duty drugs. That's when I found out just how much this would be hurting if I didn't have the heavy duty drugs, so I'll try weaning myself off in a few more days. Until then my biggest activity has been sleeping, although we did get a chance to catch up on watching Strange New Worlds.

 

 

I got free non skid socks out of the deal. Well, I haven't seen the bill for them yet.

 

 

Yesterday I managed to read an entire writer's Digest magazine, although I skipped the poetry page. It took all my brain power, especially after a dose of Benadryl because of the itching under my bandage. Stop blinking, third eye! But that's been about all I can complain about.

(Actually, Emily read the fine print for the pain med and realize that I am suffering from every single one of the side effects listed, from upset stomach to, yes, back pain--including itching.)

 

Oven warmed blankets!


 We ordered 45 copies of Haunted Noble County Indiana, and as of yesterday sold 40 of them. That's pretty darn good, considering I haven't left the house other than to go to the hospital. That includes those sold by Butterfly Alley Gifts, a shop just up the street from us. It doesn't include Amazon and other online sales; our website is live, but not set up to take orders just yet. 

I waved a copy of the book around while they were wheeling me into the OR, but nobody seemed interested.

 

So as soon as I came out of the mental fog I ordered 50 more copies, and they should be here in a few days. Here's something weird: I also ordered 10 copies each of Storm Squalls and The Notorious Ian Grant. For some reason, they're sending them to me piecemeal: three copies here, five copies there, and twice I got just one copy in a package. It seems like it would have saved a lot of shipping trouble to just send them all at once.

 


Anyway, I'm finding talk to text, or whatever it's called, to be very frustrating. Way too much time spent going back to correct it -- maybe I just need to work on enunciation. Typing one handed is even worse, so for now I'm going to take my special happy pill and call it a day. Thanks to all the well wishers!

 

 

 

You can preorder, order, and generally make contact here:

·        Amazon:  https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B0058CL6OO

·        Barnes & Noble:  https://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/"Mark R Hunter"

·        Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/4898846.Mark_R_Hunter

·        Blog: https://markrhunter.blogspot.com/

·        Website: http://www.markrhunter.com/

·        Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ozma914/

·        Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkRHunter914

·        Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markrhunter/

·        Twitter: https://twitter.com/MarkRHunter

·        Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MarkRHunter

·        Substack:  https://substack.com/@markrhunter

·        Tumblr:  https://www.tumblr.com/ozma914

·        Smashwords:  https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/ozma914

·        Audible:  https://www.audible.com/search?searchAuthor=Mark+R.+Hunter&ref_pageloadid=4C1TS2KZGoOjloaJ&pf

 


Remember: Pain meds might make you blah blah blah.